Filter by RegEx

Description

Selects objects by the value of a string property, using regular expression replacement.

Input

  • SOURCE [OBJ]: the list of objects to filter

Output

  • TRUE [OBJ]: the objects for which the selection applies

  • FALSE [OBJ]: the objects for which the selection does not apply

Parameters

  • Property: the string property to check. Use * to consider all properties.

  • Use sub-properties: when set to true, the values of all sub properties are also included. Sub-properties can be defined in the data with the rdfs:subPropertyOf relation.

  • Pattern RegEx: the regular expression to use for the match.

  • Language: when a language is selected, only the strings in this language are extracted. This uses the language tags that are defined in the data.

  • Case-sensitive: if set to false, upper/lower case is ignored

Output scores can be aggregated and/or normalised.

Regular expressions

Regular expressions are internally evaluated by a PCRE engine. For a syntax reference, see this page. For a 1-page syntax reference, see this cheat-sheet.

Some of the most common questions/mistakes

  • Regular expressions are different from [glob patterns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glob_(programming) using wildcards. In particular, * does NOT mean “anything”, .* does.

  • All special characters (. * + ? | \ ( ) [ ] ^ $) must be escaped (prefixed with \) when they are meant literally, in the Pattern RegEx.

  • ^ indicates the beginning of an input text, or negation when used inside a multiple choice (e.g. [^\d-_]). $ indicates the end of an input text.

  • \b indicates a word-boundary (spaces, punctuation, etc.).

Examples

  • Find names in the form of Smith, John:

    • Pattern RegEx: \b[^,]+\s*,\s*\b\w+\b

  • Find any day of the week (with Case-sensitive = false):

    • Pattern RegEx: \b(mon|tue|wednes|thurs|fri|sat|sun)day\b